by Laura Alden
“It won’t last,” I said comfortingly. “It never does.”
She brightened. “You are a ray of sunshine and I hereby give you permission to stop by and bug me any time you please.”
“I already do that.”
“Oh, yeah.” She grinned at me. “So. What’s up in your world? Is that Pete treating you right? You know, I never knew what you saw in that Evan Garrett, anyway. Rich, sure, and easy on the eyes, but he wasn’t good enough for you.”
“Some people would say it was the other way around.”
“And some people are idiots, but we still let them vote and have drivers’ licenses.”
“If there were laws against being stupid,” I said, “we’d all be spending time in jail.” Jean looked thoughtful, so I hurried on. “Back when I was working here, right after I got married, you always told me to write the truth.”
Jean nodded. “Now, there’s another guy who wasn’t good enough for you. That ex-husband of yours never saw through that bumbling act you used to put on all the time. You don’t do it nearly so much these days.”
I sat up straight. “I don’t bumble.”
She made a rude noise in the back of her throat. “Right. And I don’t need a haircut,” she said, pushing her too-long bangs out of her eyes. “You were talking about truth. Generally or specifically?”
“I’m looking for the truth about Cookie Van Doorne.”
Jean made a “huh” kind of noise and gave me a long look. “Do you know something I don’t know?”
“Doubt it.”
“See, you’re doing it again. That bumbling thing.” She looked up at the ceiling. “Cookie Van Doorne. I never knew her real name,” she mused. “Must have been something horrible to want to stay a Cookie all your life.”
“It can be hard to shake a nickname,” I said, thinking about a boy I’d known in grade school who was still called Ants because he’d once sat on a hill of the little creatures and ended up with ants . . . well, in his pants.
But Jean wasn’t paying any attention to me. “The truth is, I don’t know much about Cookie.”
“Oh.” So much for that bright idea. “Well, thanks for trying. I’ll—”
“Get that hound dog look off your face. Just because I don’t know anything doesn’t mean I can’t help. There’s someone else here in town that knows everything about everybody. I’m surprised you didn’t go see her first.”
A feeling of impending doom descended upon me. I slid down in the chair. “Please tell me you’re not going to say what I think you’re going to say.”
Jean chuckled. “You want the truth, don’t you? Go talk to Auntie May.”
• • •
Right after lunch, I once again donned boots, coat, and gloves and headed into the wild world that lived outside the safety of the bookstore.
“I’m off,” I said, waving to Lois and Yvonne.
Lois waved back. “Good luck storming the castle.”
I smiled at the reference to one of my favorite movies of all time. My smile went even wider when Yvonne asked in a puzzled voice, “What castle? I thought she was going to Sunny Rest.”
Lois shook her head sadly. “So young, yet so out of touch with the finer things in life. Lucky for you, I happen to own the twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of The Princess Bride. Do you want butter or extra butter on your popcorn when you come over to watch it? How about tonight?”
The door closed on Yvonne’s response. On the other hand, the wild world might be safer than my bookstore when Lois was feeling Lois-y.
A few blocks later, I walked into Sunny Rest Assisted Living. “You look half-frozen!” exclaimed the receptionist.
“Another lovely day in Wisconsin,” I said, smiling. Or at least I tried to smile. My cheeks were so numb from cold I wasn’t sure what they were doing. “Do you happen to know where Auntie May is?”
The receptionist scrunched up her face. “You sure you want to do that? She’s been on a tear today. She’s made two aides cry since lunchtime.”
It was more of a need than a want. I took off my gloves and unzipped my coat, welcoming the warmth that was starting to spread through me. “What do you think it would take to make Auntie May cry?”
She looked at me sourly. “Losing a big pot in the weekly poker game.”
I laughed. “I’m surprised she can get a game together these days. She’s won money from everybody in the building.” The games were played with pennies, but still.
“You know Auntie May. She’s a pretty good persuader.” The receptionist told me to look in the sunroom. “I walked past a few minutes ago and she was in there trying to get up a euchre game.”
The wide carpeted hallway absorbed the sound of my feet. Sunny Rest was a comfortable facility, run and staffed by dedicated people who did their best to make the building a home for its residents, a fiendishly difficult job. So many regulations to adhere to, so many details to deal with, so many—
“I hear you’re looking for me.”
The purple wheelchair was planted in the middle of the hallway. Somehow I’d managed to walk right up to Auntie May without being aware of her presence.
“You awake in there?” Auntie May snapped her fingers under my nose. “I suppose you want to talk about Cookie, eh?” At my nod, she pointed her chin in the direction of the sunroom. “In there. It’s empty. Everybody ran off when I wanted to play euchre. Bunch of cowardly, spineless jellyfish. So what if I win all the time? It’s the playing that’s fun.” Her wheelchair rolled to a stop next to large windows that let in so much light they made me squint.
I dragged a chair around so my back was to the glass and sat down. “Jean McKenna said I should talk to you about Cookie.”
“Can’t believe you went to Jean first. You should have come to me days ago. I been waiting for you, you know.” She sniffed.
Was it possible that I’d hurt Auntie May’s feelings? There were entire socioeconomic groups in Rynwood that fully believed she didn’t have feelings and that her heart had shrunk to the size of a pea. I looked at her closely. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings,” I said.
She snorted. “Feelings, schmeelings. Got no time for that kind of crap, and you shouldn’t, either, not if you’re going to . . . ah . . . ah-chooo!”
I pulled back fast, but tiny sneeze droplets spewed all across my hands. Ick.
“Darn cold,” Auntie May said, rubbing at her nose with the tissue that was in her hand. “Doctor says I gotta be careful it don’t turn into pneumonia, so he’s not wanting me to go on the casino trips.”
Ah. May lived for the days the facility bus shuttled interested residents to the closest casino. No wonder she was making everyone’s life miserable. I got up, used the hand sanitizer sitting on a nearby table, and came back, rubbing my hands.
“Pansy stuff,” Auntie May said, sneering at the liquid. “In my day we got used to germs.”
I deeply wanted to ask her why she had a cold if she was so tough, but that wasn’t an argument for today. Or probably any day. Auntie May had a tendency to win every battle she fought. The day I figured out how she did that, I’d take notes and write a how-to book that would make me millions.
“Cookie Van Doorne,” I said. “What can you tell me?”
Auntie May cackled and rubbed her palms together. “Hope you don’t got anywhere to go, Bethie. We could be here awhile.”
There was little I wanted to do less than sit and listen to May Werner dish out gossip, but I couldn’t think of any other way to get the information. For a very short moment, I wondered if I could teach Auntie May how to use e-mail and Facebook, but as soon as I visualized the number of e-mails she’d send me every day and the types of things Auntie May was likely to “share” on Facebook, I banished the idea from my brain.
Auntie May squinted a look at me. “What’s in that pretty little head of yours, missy?”
Nothing, absolutely nothing. “Do you know what Cookie’s real name was?”
“Cookie,�
� she said promptly.
“You’re joking.”
“Does this look like it’s joking?” She pointed to her lined features, wrinkles crisscrossing wrinkles that crisscrossed wrinkles. “Cookie’s parents had a slew of kids and she came last in the bunch. She didn’t even have a name for a long time, just Baby. Cookie was her first word, and it turned into her real name.”
I gaped at Auntie May. “She didn’t have a name for a year? How can that be? I had to give the hospital my children’s names before we went home.”
May shrugged her bony shoulders. “Things were different back then. We got away with all sorts of stuff you’d get tossed in jail for these days. Like the time Jimmy Stynes got into the—”
I did not want to hear about Jimmy Stynes, who I’d always known as a very nice man who’d died in his sleep at the ripe old age of ninety-five. “What else do you know about Cookie?”
Auntie May harrumphed, made a snarky comment about kids these days, then said, “Cookie was a big tattletale as a kid. One of those creepy little kids who always pops up in places they shouldn’t be.”
By great effort, I held my tongue and did not compare Cookie to Auntie May. “And as an adult?” I asked.
May nodded. “Same thing. Only she got sneakier about it.”
Was “sneakier” a word? I debated the question and reached no conclusion. I’d have to look it up later. “What do you mean?”
Auntie May settled back in her chair. “You want recent stuff or old stuff?”
I didn’t want any of it. “Anything involving people in the PTA.” I listened to what I’d said. “Anything involving anyone in the PTA or from Tarver Elementary,” I amended.
“Hmm.” May rubbed her chin. “Okay, okay. I got something. No, I got two somethings.” She cackled. I winced. “First one.” She rolled her chair closer to mine. “Isabel Klein.”
“You mean Isabel Olsen?”
“How many Isabels you think are running around this town?” The front wheels of her chair bumped up against my boots. “When Isabel was a girl, she wanted a puppy for her birthday. Her mom—that’s Kim—drove up north to look at this litter of puppies. Border collies, sheepdogs, Labs, something like that.” Auntie May flicked the detail away as unimportant. “This place was out on some back road, one of those places where if there are two cars on the road at the same time, it’s a traffic jam.”
I nodded. I’d grown up on a road like that.
“Anyway, Kim was driving down the street and some kid rode his bike straight in front of her. Oh, he wasn’t killed, don’t look like that. Broke his leg, I think. And it wasn’t Kim’s fault at all, but Cookie had never liked Kim.”
May stopped, and for a moment I wondered if she was going to express some sympathy—empathy, even—for Kim or the boy or for Cookie.
“Never did get the goods on the Cookie-Kim story,” she said regretfully. “Anyway, Cookie heard about the accident before most everyone else and got to spin it the way she wanted. By the time Kim got home, Cookie had got the story around town that Kim was a driving menace, that maybe she’d been drinking, that she should be in jail for what she did to that kid on the bike.”
“That’s . . . that’s . . .” I couldn’t think exactly what it was.
“After that, Kim didn’t do well. She got all depressed, ended up losing her job, would have lost her house if her brother hadn’t helped out. She’s better now, but she’s not the same.”
The nasty little story made me want to go wash my face. “Are Isabel and her mom close?”
May smashed her thumb and index finger together. “Like this. Kim’s husband took off when Isabel was still in diapers. Kim raised that girl best she could, but she’s not one of those real capable women and Izzy grew up taking care of Kim as much as Kim took care of her. Close as sisters, those two.”
“What’s the other story?” Maybe this would be a nicer one.
Auntie May grinned. “Stephanie Pesch. She’s hated Cookie for years. Years!”
I looked at my lap, then back up at Auntie May. If I left now, I wouldn’t hear what she had to say about the object of Oliver’s crush. I sighed. “Why did Stephanie have a problem with Cookie?”
“Cookie had a daughter, Deanna.”
I frowned. “Her son was at the funeral, but there wasn’t a daughter.” Although she’d had two children, I remembered.
Auntie May’s cackle grated on my ears. “Deanna. She hadn’t talked to her mother in years. Guess her funeral wasn’t a good enough reason to come back to Rynwood.”
The impossibility of not attending my mother’s funeral rattled around in my head for a while, then rattled on out. “What does Stephanie have to do with that?”
“Stephie and Deanna were best friends from the time they were little kids. Hardly had any other friends, they were so close. Up out of high school, Deanna fell in love with this Darren. Love at first sight.”
May clasped her hands and batted her eyes at me, then snorted. “Like that really exists. Anyway, Cookie didn’t like Darren, didn’t think he was good enough for Deanna. He went up north on a hunting trip, and when he came back, Cookie made sure to tell him Deanna had been seeing someone else when he was gone.”
She shook her head sorrowfully, but I was sure the emotion didn’t go deeper than the hair on her chin.
“He went off mad. Wouldn’t believe Deanna, so he probably wasn’t good enough for her, but that didn’t keep Deanna from blowing up at her mother. She packed up and moved to Hawaii to get as far away from her mother as she could. Voilà!” Auntie May kissed her fingertips and flared out her hand. “Instant hatred! Stephie’s best friend was gone forever and it was all Cookie’s fault.”
Another nasty little tale. “Did Cookie have any redeeming qualities?” I asked.
Auntie May shrugged. “Nice girls don’t hit my radar.”
I thanked May for her time, answered her questions about Pete as obliquely as possible, and headed back to the store.
Could Isabel really have poisoned Cookie? Could Stephanie? Maybe they both disliked Cookie immensely, but the disliking was a long way from murder. Then I wondered if poisoning someone would even feel like murder. Could you convince yourself that poisoning was a solution to a problem, and not a cold-blooded murder?
I watched as my boots made their way down the sidewalk.
I hoped not. I truly hoped not.
• • •
When I got back, the store rang with the silence of suspended arguments. I looked from Lois to Paoze, then glanced at my watch. Flossie must have just left for the day.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Lois said. “What makes you think there’s something wrong?”
Her outfit of the day bore a striking resemblance to what female ice skaters might have worn in the early 1900s. Long brown skirt, long button-up sweater over a white shirt with a lace collar, beret worn at a jaunty angle. Instead of skates she wore leather boots that were so old, she must have dug them out of the back of Auntie May’s closet.
“What makes me think so?” I sniffed the air. “Seems to me there is a lingering, yet distinct, odor of unfinished arguments in this room.”
“It’s these boots,” Lois muttered. “I couldn’t get all the mildew off them.”
“Paoze, do you have a minute?” I motioned him to the back of the store. “You’re the tallest one here, and there’s a spiderweb in my office that’s ripe for the picking.”
The gentlemanly young man nodded. “Of course, Mrs. Kennedy.” He rolled up the sleeves of his pristinely white shirt and headed back.
When he got there, he looked around and said, “I do not see a web, Mrs. Kennedy. Could it have fallen down?”
I shut my office door quietly. “There isn’t a spiderweb, Paoze. I want to ask you something, and I don’t want Lois to know.”
He went still. “Have I done something that is wrong? I am sorry, Mrs. Kennedy. Please let me—”
“Don’t be silly.” I waved
him to the guest chair and sat in my own. “It’s Lois. Or, more specifically, Lois and Flossie.”
Sitting with a straight spine, he put his hands in his lap. “I am not certain what you are asking.”
I rolled my eyes. “Please. Every time I walk into the room, they switch whatever argument they’re having into a fight about books. I prefer L. M. Montgomery’s Emily books over the Anne books myself, but there’s no way I’d yell at someone over it. And they were working fine together all last fall and even through the holidays. Something happened and neither one of them will tell me what it is.”
Paoze looked at his hands. “I am very sorry, Mrs. Kennedy, but I cannot help you.”
I studied him. I would have preferred to watch his face, but with his head down, all I could see was the top of his head, and the perfectly combed black hair wasn’t much of an indicator of anything except exceptional personal hygiene.
It was obvious that he knew what was going on between Lois and Flossie, but it was just as obvious that he didn’t want to tell me. Which meant he’d been told something in confidence, and I didn’t want to force him to break a promise. I sighed. “Tell Lois you smashed a big hairy spider. That should perk her up a little.”
Paoze stood, opened the door, then hesitated. “Mrs. Kennedy?”
“Yes?”
But he was looking at his hands again. “Nothing. I am sorry to trouble you.”
This time, since I was sitting and he was standing, I could see his face. “Paoze,” I said, “if there’s something troubling you, you can talk to me. Doesn’t matter what it is. I’ll listen. It can be about the store, or school, or your family, or about the horrible play-off season the Green Bay Packers had. I’m here, okay? And you know I can keep a secret.”
“Yes, Mrs. Kennedy.” He spoke so quietly that if I hadn’t seen his lips move, I might have imagined I heard anything. “Thank you, Mrs. Kennedy.”
He left, but I stared after him for a very long time.
Chapter 14
I drove to work the next morning with the express intention of dragging Cookie’s box out from under my desk. No matter how much the thought of the task creeped me out, it was past time. Cookie had had the box sent to me for a reason, and the least I could do was examine its contents.
